


The Long Road From Then To Now

by afteriwake



Series: nongentorum [22]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Parenting, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Light Angst, Long-Term Relationship(s), Marriage, POV Siger, Reflection, Relationship Problems, Relationship(s), fixing mistakes, mentions of drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 21:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7008736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Siger reflects on the long and bumpy road that he and his wife have been on to have the relationship they do now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Road From Then To Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chitarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chitarra/gifts).



> This was written for my friend **Chitarra** , who had requested one of the fics that led up to my 700th Sherlock fic by a Mr & Mummy Holmes fic. It was inspired by the quote " _I saw that you were perfect and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more._ " via **hplyrikz** at Tumblr.

_Just admit I’m right._

He had to grin at the message, what was seemingly the nine hundredth that evening. Thankfully it wasn’t a serious argument between them, more f a friendly tiff, and thus he didn’t mind the constant back and forth between them. In a way, it was rather fun. Added a bit of spice to their relationship. It was quite invigorating.

It had all started off about a disagreement over the hives in the backyard, and somehow it had escalated into something about whether his Great-Aunt Rosie’s recipe for bread pudding would be appropriate for dinner when Sherlock and his wife came to call the next week because would it make the right impression, and he had said they didn’t need to make a big fuss because Sherlock wasn’t going to want them to and really, Molly wouldn’t mind and she had said it was imperative that she came off as a loving mother-in-law if she wanted the chance to see Hamish more often. He knew very well she could see Hamish as often as she wanted; Molly had made great strides in smoothing over the bumps in the relationship between Sherlock and Violet and if she wanted to pop down to London to surprise them as long as there was a _bit_ of warning it would be okay. But Violet was insisting she was right.

It had caused problems in the past, that insistence. When they were first together, oh, he had thought she was the moon and the stars and the sun, and that the world revolved around her. He had looked past the problems and loved her because he thought she was perfect. But slowly, he realized she wasn’t. She was flawed, just as he was. And...sometimes their flaws clashed in ways that caused rows that weren’t always for the best.

And sometimes those rows were done in front of the children.

And sometimes those rows brought out the worst in both of them.

Then one night he’d gone to the pub and she’d packed her things, said she was going to leave him, and he’d been about to let her walk out the door when the phone had rung. It had been Mycroft on the other end, saying Sherlock had been found nearly dead in a flop house with a list. And Mycroft, oh, he had read them the riot act, he had. He had let them have it with both barrels, let them know that they had been selfish and it was going to cost them dearly.

And then they had gone home, and he had gone round and emptied the house of all the liquor, and she had slowly unpacked her bags, and they’d had the first real conversation they’d had in ages that hadn’t ended with yelled curses or stony silence or sleeping on opposite sides of the bed with their backs to each other. That night, he had tentatively snaked an arm around Violet’s waist and held her close, and she let him.

And then he had hope that maybe their stubbornness and differences wouldn’t be the end of them after all.

It took some time to learn to love the imperfections. It took time to realize that the things that he had loved at first and grown to view with disdain were still things that he could love again, even if he knew that Violet wasn’t perfect. The vision of the perfect woman he’d fallen in love with had been long shattered and he had thought it would be harder, letting go of the ideal, but it hadn’t been. But falling in love with Violet as she was was just a bit harder.

When he had realized he had managed it, though, he realized there was a lightness in his heart he hadn’t felt since the heady days early in his relationship. They were smiling more, able to laugh more. They talked more. There was an ease between them that hadn’t been there in almost twenty-five years, if it had ever really been there at all. And then he realized he shouldn’t have waited until he’d lost his eldest and nearly lost his youngest before he’d made things right with the woman he should have made his priority since day one.

It was a long road, and there were still moments when it felt like they backslid a bit, but they never went as far back as they had before, never that. They always made it a point to talk before it got to the point where they couldn’t fix things, and they made sure _never_ to go to bed angry. The lessons they had learned the hard way stayed with them and they made sure never to repeat the mistakes that had caused them to learn those lessons in the first place, and so their life was better for it.

He pulled himself from his thoughts and keyed in a message in reply. _I suppose you are,_ he typed before sending it and then stowing his mobile. He’d let her win this argument, he supposed. It wouldn’t hurt to be nice to Molly a bit more before Christmas, ensure she would stop their son from objecting to them perhaps visiting over the holidays. And, perhaps, she would allow him to win an argument in the near future.

After all, that was the way a good marriage worked.


End file.
